Shortly after entering the forest, he returned to a ruined town: brittle concrete and shattered glass telling of the passage of time.
The air lingered with the smell of rust and motor oil as he began his return journey to the city.
Nature was already reclaiming the town—vines tore at the walls and trees pushed through cracked roads—so he climbed a half-collapsed office tower using the vines.
Reaching the top of the building, he observed the surroundings below.
He tried to remember the path.
'The battleship wreck—one kilometer east. Then north to reach the city.'
As he climbed down, he accidentally scraped off some dust from the wall. As he descended, he smelled something acidic. It made his nose twitch like an allergy.
He wasn't alone...
"It's those things again!"
The next moment, his boots hadn't even reached solid ground yet when shadows lunged at him from the dark.
He let go of the vine, unsheathed his knife, and angled his body so gravity pulled him down. Using the force of his fall, he swung the blade in a single clean arc as he passed two rat-like creatures, severing their heads before they could react.
Their bodies were collapsing as he dropped past them.
Finally, he reached the ground.
Those things had dull claws but sharp teeth, and their size barely reached half his shin. But he hated fighting them, as their blood was acidic—not much for harming him, but enough to dull the blade over time.
Once the blade became dull, he had nothing to sharpen it with here.
"Twenty more… manageable."
Red eyes shone through the darkness. He adjusted his position among the cracks and rubble, then, with a burst, he rushed toward an opening in the wall.
Using speed, those things couldn't even react to him before another got cut in the neck, dying instantly.
Kuck!
He kicked another one that stood in his path away, sending it slamming into the wall with enough force to shatter its bones, as he kept moving.
He'd already eliminated dozens by luring them into a chokepoint, their blue blood staining his clothes.
Crack!
Suddenly, the ground beneath him broke and collapsed into a shallow hole, throwing him off balance and sending him rolling.
He cursed.
"Shit!"
The momentum from his speed sent him forward toward the wall. He braced for impact as he hit it and almost broke it apart.
He felt like his right shoulder was dislocated as the knife in his hand flew away. His right arm lagged—dead weight. He switched hands without thinking. As five more rushed toward him.
Twisting midair, he could only adapt—striking the nearest one with his elbow in the neck, crushing it with his weight.
"Got you," he muttered as he drove his elbow down.
Crack!
He threw a rock with his left hand, and it perfectly hit its head; the force crushed its skull inward, killing it instantly.
His clothes were stained with blue blood, and a sharp tang of acid lingered beneath the sour reek of garbage.
As the situation calmed and he was no longer in immediate danger, he went to retrieve his knife but noticed movement out of the corner of his eye. He saw two of them.
"Last two, huh?" he whispered.
The knife spun through the air, piercing its head. He pulled out a handgun from a holster, followed by throwing it, hitting the other in the head and sending it backwards.
He stood still, stunned by his own action, staring at his hand.
'…Did I just throw my gun?'
His body remembered the throwing motion before his brain could think about it.
'This is starting to feel like working overtime with no pay again… even in another world.'
Some habits didn't change.
'He used to take whatever job came his way.
Sometimes he pushed too far… lost himself a little.'
'That was the fun part.'
After he made sure to deal with all of them and confirmed that his surroundings were safe, he finally relaxed and observed himself as he gathered his equipment, fixed his shoulder, and moved away.
He didn't want to stay put, as the blood smell might lure in some kind of predator.
No injuries, just some scratches from rolling around and some bruising, mostly. His clothes had some tears here and there, revealing the muscles underneath, filled with countless scars.
"When I passed here in the morning, it was not even this tedious."
It's not that he didn't know how dangerous the forest was, but he needed something to eat. There was no fruit; creatures were inedible.
"Ah—my wrist and hip. It's been a while since I fought like that."
He hadn't done close combat in years, possibly after he switched to using a gun more, as it was simpler and better at the job.
...
After dealing with the creatures, he returned to the streets where rusted cars were piled on top of each other, doors hanging open, and the path ahead was cut off.
Then he followed the bank of what seemed to be a drying river as the ruins gradually thinned and the forest became sparse. He slid down the slope.
"Ah… my ass. Climbing up was easier."
He slid down; stones, tree roots, and scattered rocks made the descent rough, like hitting small bumps the whole way down, but there was little he could do about it.
It was the path he chose; the shortest way out was always the straight one. He always chose this way when he needed to do something quickly, he thought as he forced his boots through the salt.
...
When he reached the ground, his boots were already filled with sand. From the look of it, this place had once been a sea.
"Even the sea's gone…"
He looked at the salt beneath his boots.
"…What kind of world eats an ocean?"
"But who am I to judge? I showed up here out of nowhere, and now I'm stealing garbage."
He moved across the dry, salt-filled ground alone, past a few stray trees—nothing else; not even a trace of life.
As he kept moving, his water supply felt noticeably lighter.
He laughed jokingly.
"At this rate… I might end up drinking my own piss. Heh."
Even so, the thought didn't bother him much. Walking alone through a world like this…
really brought him back to the past.
...
After fifteen minutes of walking, which felt longer than it should, he finally reached the wreck of the battleship he used as a landmark.
The dryness and heat had already started to crack his lips.
He thought about finding a river out in the wild—some contamination was fine. He could purify it.
But that was the strange part. He hadn't seen or heard any water at all. Did those trees rely on underground water or something?
As for the ship, there was a large hole in its side, as if it had been blown open by an explosion, and the surface was covered in rust. It was similar to what he knew about battleships, but much larger, almost twice the size, with cannons three times the caliber.
There was nothing useful inside—just electronic parts and some old, broken cannon shells. Even what looked like broken turret ports were scattered across the interior. As he moved along what seemed to be a supply corridor, it seemed to be more of a weapons platform than a ship built to fight something huge.
No crew rooms. No cafeteria. Not even a toilet.
"…What kind of ship is this?"
It didn't feel like it was built for people.
The design was flat—six cannons mounted above.
Where the command room should've been, there was only a single-barreled cannon, the largest of the six.
A strange antenna extended from the side. He couldn't tell what it was for.
Probably radar.
…Probably.
He didn't even bother to scavenge anything here. Everything was big and heavy; carrying it with him would be stupid. Those scraps were really just scraps.
Buzz!
His unresponsive phone suddenly vibrated.
He pulled it out. The blue screen showed a progress bar barely moving, despite repeated resets.
<
The monotone voice played from the speakers.
He responded in surprise.
"...My phone can talk?"
But after initiating the sentence, it returned to silence once again. Well, it seemed he needed to enter the ship again. Since he had the time and nothing else to do, he should try to follow it. The cube from the dump looked high-tech and all.
He followed the phone's signal, slipping deeper into the ship as the floor groaned beneath his boots and a loose panel sparked in the dim.
He felt his phone vibrating again.
"This..."
An emergency vent lay beneath the rubble—he'd explored the ship before, but never this deep. He cleared the rubble and crawled inside through the vent.
"I hope all this effort is really worth it."
As he got deeper and deeper, he could barely see what was in front of him, relying on the blue light from his phone to navigate.
The phone buzzed and displayed: the arrow pointed him into a wall.
He looked to his left—only a cold, hard metallic wall. It was cold in the vent, the opposite of outside, but he kept trying anyway. He had already touched, pushed, and even tried to pull for like ten minutes, but it seemed nothing worked—
"…Hm?"
When he tried to slide it, something shifted—a component opening—and beneath it was some kind of panel. No numbers, no card slot.
Not a lock.
Then what was it—some kind of interface? But how to open it, and how did this thing even work in a place where there should be no power?
Since something in his phone brought him here, it should have a way to enter. It wasn't his problem; it was the phone's problem if it couldn't even do that. He would leave.
He thought for a moment, then decided to bring the phone close to the panel. The screen began to flicker. The air around it distorted, like a faint heat haze, subtle enough that most people wouldn't notice. Even someone with sharp perception, like him, would have to be close to see it.
"Is it… some kind of code?"
It looked like dense lines of 0s and 1s shifting across the surface—he couldn't make sense of them, though he felt they were attempting to communicate with the panel, like what happened to his phone before.
Creek...!
"It seems to work."
The panel lit up in green light as the wall opened. It sounded rusty, like gears that needed lubrication. Behind it seemed to be a path forward. He was even more confused about how it could be opened in the first place.
If it worked, it worked.
As he crawled, he was going deeper and deeper. Judging by the distance, he should be close to the center of the ship.
....
Five minutes passed.
After crawling through the tight space, guided only by the faint blue light from his phone, he felt along the metal walls until his hand finally brushed against something solid, dust filling the vent, making him sneeze every few steps.
"Is this… it?"
He kicked—
Bam!
A vent grille flew away from the impact.
The panel gave way, revealing a space unlike anything he'd seen—massive, dwarfing him.Wiring stretched in every direction, making him feel like an ant.
He knew the ship was big—But this was something else.
It looked like something out of a sci-fi movie—four reactors filled with some kind of liquid, each taking up a huge portion of the space.
All kinds of wiring ran into it from every direction. Four reactor-like structures surrounded what looked like a central tank—or maybe a chamber—in a room full of unknown electronic devices.
He dropped down onto some kind of path and walked along the narrow railing. As he got closer, his phone began to vibrate more frequently.
It seemed to be a cube—the same type he'd seen at the dump, likely from some robot or mech. Before, he'd only seen broken limbs, but this time it seemed to be from a ship.
He wasn't sure if it was humanoid or something else, but this time the cube was bigger—about the size of his head—with no visible damage compared to the one he had seen before. So… was it something like a brain?
Well, since he was already here, he might as well see what happened next. So he held his phone forward, bringing it closer to the vat-like container holding the cube. Sure enough, there seemed to be a reaction.
The cube started to rotate. The nearby electronic devices lit up, redirecting some kind of energy to begin operating on their own. But he was pretty sure this place had no energy—so how could it still be operating under these conditions? The ship should've been abandoned for decades already.
As it rotated, it started to shrink in size, as if it were restructuring its own framework. Its body is split apart and reassembled. He doesn't know how many times it's been done in a split second, but his senses tell him that it has already been reconstructed more than a thousand times.
It folded in on itself like a Rubik's Cube, condensing and shrinking so fast he couldn't follow it.
Soon enough, he finally saw what it had become.
A chip of some kind—almost the same as his phone's memory card.
As the liquid in the vat drained away, it was pushed out through a small opening. Everything returned to silence once again.
He picked it up.
Smooth surface.
Too heavy for something that small.
His phone vibrated, like it was trying to tear itself out of his hand.
The screen flickered.
It snapped toward the chip.
His grip tightened instinctively.
"…What the?"
The vibration intensified. His fingers twitched. Not his will.
The phone dragged his hand forward—slow at first, then faster.
"Hey!"
Too late—the slot opened, and the chip was already in.
He waited as a second passed.
'So… nothing happened—'
Suddenly, his phone burst into light. He could feel its weight increase, almost as heavy as a dumbbell. On the screen, the progress bar that hadn't seemed to move before now advanced at a rate visible to his eyes.
The device began to morph, reshaping into a cube—the same one he had seen before as a chip, before breaking apart and reconstructing into something that looked like his phone.
<
What appears on the screen is an unknown logo, something named.
<